About an hour later Ryan braked the softly purring BMW motorcycle to a halt on top of the rock ledge near the Hummer.
He could see that everybody in the wag was alive, although Krysty looked a lot paler than usual. Even her hair was hanging limply.
Pushing down the kickstand, Ryan climbed off the bike and started that way, but stopped. From the vantage point atop the ledge, he had a commanding view of the two villes in the distance. The airfield was dotted with fiery mounds, the distorted shadows of people and horses moving around the blazes doing who knew what, maybe scavenging for anything they could find. A lot of trib went into the crater, some of it had to still be useful.
“Glad to see you here,” J.B. said. “So, did it work?”
“The stingwings tore her apart,” Ryan stated. “And just to make sure, I pumped a couple of extra rounds into the Sky wag after it caught fire and was plummeting to the ground.”
“Sounds aced,” Jak said, cradling the S&W M-4000 shotgun.
There was dried blood on the teen’s collar, but none of it seemed to be his. Ryan could guess the cause.
“Won’t know for sure until I see her fragging corpse,” Ryan said, cracking the knuckles on each hand. “But she was going so fast when she hit those trees I really don’t see how anybody could have survived.”
“Well done, my dear Ryan,” Doc said from the edge of the rock ledge. “And we accomplished our own mission with equal aplomb. The technical journal is no more, Karl has been recovered and the slaves were set free.”
Slaves? Ryan frowned, then shrugged. He really hadn’t given them a lot of thought, but that had been done, too, so much the better.
“Found him easy enough, did they?” Ryan asked, going to the rear seat of the Hummer.
Mildred glanced up at his presence, then went right back to work stitching closed a jagged gash in Krysty’s side. He could see that the redhead would be fine. Krysty was just asleep, her chest rising and falling in a regular pattern.
“Sure, they found Karl. No prob,” J.B. said. “Just as we thought, the ville sec men went straight to the crater, giving us plenty of time to hide our tracks and get up here out of sight. Then they did a recce on the earlier war wag. Found Karl knocked out, lying with the aced sec men, an empty blaster in his hand.” The man grinned behind the curling smoke. “Some stud named Brian thought Karl had to have escaped from the ‘coldhearts’ to warn the others. Real hero stuff.”
“And he didn’t mention us?”
“Not a word,” J.B. stated.
“Good. Blaster or arrow?” Ryan asked, gesturing at Krysty’s blood shirt.
“Dog bite,” Mildred replied, using her knife to cut the fishing line. “There’s a new scar for the collection.”
“Better a scar than a pine box,” Ryan said, reaching out to touch the cheek of the sleeping woman. She murmured something unintelligible and nodded off again.
“Another quote from the book of Trader?” Mildred asked, tucking away her medical tools.
Ryan shrugged. “Either him, or my father. Just something I heard once.”
“Wise words.”
“I know.”
“Bullet holes, blood, stingwing feathers…” Jak stated, kneeling alongside the predark machine examining the damage. “Must been hell of a ride. Bike nuked.”
“So’s my ass.” Ryan snorted, rubbing the back of his pants. “Leave it behind for the locals to scav. We don’t need it anymore. Make better time back to the redoubt in the Hummer.”
“Booby?” Jak asked, squinting an eye and reaching into his pocket to unearth a gren.
“No, just let it be. Let’s roll.”
Standing, the teenager tucked the mil charge away. Good. Grens were hard to come by, and he hated to waste one.
Climbing into the Hummer, Ryan caught a motion in the starry sky and grabbed for the longblaster still hung across his chest. Then he saw it was only a vulture, probably attracted by the smell of spilled blood and death in the crater. Ryan closed the door and leaned out the window, watching it circle the airfield like a plane getting ready to land. Damnedest thing.
Yeah, vultures first, Ryan scowled. Then the stingwings would be next, and after that, stickies. Mebbe even more of those triple-cursed howlers! But that was a prob for the locals, and had nothing to do with them anymore.
“Fly free, little sky raider,” Doc said, looking dreamily at the heavens. “Enjoy it while you can. Because someday a wiser humanity will rise from these Stygian ashes to take back the sky. Indeed, perhaps to conqueror the very stars!”
“Just not tonight, okay?” J.B. suggested, starting the engine.
“Of course.” Doc smiled, his eyes lost in the mists of time. “There is always tomorrow, my friend.”
High above the Deathlands, the vulture called out a challenge to anything else in the air, and for the moment, the cry went unanswered.
DAWN WAS JUST STARTING to break as consciousness returned to Baron Sandra Tregart. She was lying on bare earth, smashed wood and bits of charred silk everywhere. At first Sandra couldn’t comprehend where she was, then the events of the night came rushing back and the woman sat upright with a cry.
Only to find herself still trapped in the wreckage of the Angel. Broken tree limbs were everywhere, along with bits and pieces of the once magnificent machine. The frame was reduced to kindling, the silk only tattered strips, the controls smashed, the engine a fire-blackened lump, and there was no sign of the propeller.
“Gone,” she whispered in dismay. “All gone…”
“Not all, my lady,” a familiar voice exhorted.
Turning, Sandra saw a pair of shiny boots walk closer and she forced her stiff neck to look upward into the grinning face of Baron Jeffers.
“Hello, bitch,” he said as several sec men came out of the bushes along the riverbank.
“Anybody else?” Jeffers asked over a shoulder.
“No, Baron,” a sec man reported, clutching a bolt-action longblaster. “She’s alone.”
He chortled. “Excellent.”
“Jeffers,” Sandra wheezed, trying to extract herself from the heavy wreckage. “Free me, and we can cut a deal.”
“Oh, but I have everything that I want right here,” Jeffers said, a touch of madness creeping into his words.
The baron held out a hand and a sec man reached into a canvas bag hanging at his side to pull out a Molotov. Flicking a predark butane lighter alive, Jeffers ignited the rag around the neck of the glass bottle.
“Absolutely everything that I want!” Jeffers repeated, raising the bottle high.
Desperately, Sandra fumbled for the palmblasters hidden under her arms only to remember she had lost them in the battle with the stingwings.
“Time to fry, bitch,” Jeffers cooed sweetly, and threw the bottle, which smashed against the Angel. The glass shattered and the liquid burst into flames.
Panic fueled her weak arms, and Sandra grabbed the splintery frame holding her in place and heaved with both hands. But the wood only shattered from the effort, the broken ends driving into her shoulders and pinning her even more firmly into place.
“Please!” she begged, feeling the rising heat of the fire spreading across the battered fuselage. “We can cut a deal! I’ll teach you to fly! To fly! The sky will be yours!”
“Rather have you aced.” Jeffers chuckled.
“You can’t do this! I’m a fellow baron!” Sandra screamed in terror.
Jeffers gave a cold laugh as the sec man placed another Molotov into his waiting hand.
The flames were higher now, spreading rapidly along the wreckage, and in spite of the boots, both of her feet were starting to feel prickly from the growing heat.
“Then chill me!” she commanded, tears washing the shine from her eyes. “Cut my throat, or shoot me in the heart. But don’t let me burn alive! Have mercy!”
“Did you show mercy to my ville?” Baron Jeffers chortled, lighting the rag around the Molotov.
“They were aced fast! It was all over in a few ticks!”
“Ah, but there were so many people there. My friends and family, now all of those ticks combined make a lot of minutes.” He reached down to tuck the lit Molotov behind the trapped woman, just out of her reach. “But you, ah, my little sky baron, you’ll take a good long time to die.”
“Please!”
“Maybe we’ll even toss on some water to kill the flames,” Jeffers whispered. “And then cover you with wood and start a new fire in a few days. But eventually you’ll beg for death.”
“I am begging!”
Jeffers smiled insanely. “Yes, you are,” he said softly. “But not loudly enough, bitch. Oh, nowhere nearly loud enough.”
The painful feeling in her feet was intolerable, and there was a hideous stink of roasting meat in the air. Writhing in torment, Sandra couldn’t hold back the scream boiling in her throat. Then the Molotov behind her burst and liquid fire engulfed her world, bringing agony beyond comprehension. The screaming and the hellish pain seemed to last forever, but always in the background Tregart could still hear Baron Jeffers laughing in glee as he tossed more and more Molotovs onto the growing pyre…
TRAVELING NORTHWARD, the companions found the ford and crossed the Ohi without any trouble. Returning to the redoubt, they collapsed in their beds and slept for a full day. Eventually rising, the companions checked the base one more time for any supplies they could find, then went to the mat-trans chamber to make a blind jump to another redoubt. As always, they hoped it would be one stuffed full of food and weapons. But even more importantly, a redoubt located in lush farmland without any muties or villes in a thousand miles.
As the electronic mist hissed softly into existence, rose, and the weary travelers fell away into nothingness, something small moved in the shadows of the control room on the other side of the closed oval door. Rolling into the fluorescent light, the droid paused, several tiny antennas flexing in the air, giving it a decidedly insectlike appearance. The machine was about the size of a shoebox, its hull a bland neutral color, but deeply embossed into the metal was a symbol: a circle surrounded by an elliptic ring with a tiny five-pointed star set off-center.
Going around the mummified corpse of a dead tech on the floor, the droid went to the control board of the master computer and then rolled up the flat metal side of the console to reach the banks of twinkling controls on top. Carefully not touching any of the dials or buttons, the droid proceeded to a small access slot and settled down on top of it with a locking click.
Power surged into the droid, recharging its nuke batteries, and it began to send a report to its master about the companions: when they arrived in the redoubt, when they left, what they took, a detailed description of their physical status, especially any wounds or weapons, and finally, the precise location of the new redoubt the six people had just jumped to….